From: Bjoern Skolander
The Windhoek Advertiser
PO Box 3436
Stübel Street
Windhoek
NAMIBIA
Tel: (int. access code) 264 61 230 331
Fax: (int. access code) 264 61 225 863
Editorial, 18-12-1996
FREEDOM OF SEXUAL ASSOCIATION
We received some negative comment on our reports of the President's remarks
on gays and lesbians: We have no intention to publish these letters, not
because they may be hurtful or even slanderous, but because the letters are
generally of such a low intellectual level as not deserving of publication.
What we will do, instead, is to try to explain to our more intellectually
gifted readers why we think it necessary to report on comments like those
of the President.
Namibia has a Constitution. We accepted that Constitution as the framework
to regulate our behaviour. It is obvious that the Constitution will contain
rights and freedoms not to everyone's liking.
To think otherwise, is not to have the vaguest understanding of the
Constitution.
Our Constitution guarantees freedom of association.
There is no exception to that right - with perhaps the limitation that the
freedom of association does not infringe on the rights of others. Freedom of
association includes, as a matter of course, freedom of sexual association -
with the limitation that it doesn't infringe on the rights of, for example,
children under the age of sexual consent, and that is a transgression which
gays and lesbians are not solely (or characteristically) in breach of.
The right to sexual freedom of association is guaranteed, whether it is
regarded (by one particularly ignorant and slanderous letterwriter) as
"totally sickening", a "wicked thing" and who "for the ... President Nujoma
on taking a wholesome stand on the issue."
Let us consider where silence on the issue of gay rights will lead us - and
again, we are talking to those who seriously questioned our reports on the
issue, not to those who live on one or the other lunatic fringe. In the
Germany of Hitler and the Soviet Union of Stalin and his immediate
successors freedom of association didn't exist (or existed only as letters
on a page of some unenforceable showpiece constitution). To slightly adapt
the famous words by a post-War German theologian: When they came for the
Jews, I remained silent; when they came for the Gypsies, I remained silent;
when they came for the gays and lesbians (after the murder of Röhm), I
remained silent.
Or: When Stalin came for the Ukranians, I remained silent; when he came for
the artists, I remained silent. When he came for the doctors and classical
geneticists, I remained silent. When they came for me, there was nobody left
to speak on my behalf.
The aim of this newspaper, if we may be allowed to paraphrase the saying
sometimes (wrongly) attributed to Voltaire: Even if we don't like what you
are doing, we will defend your right to do that until death. The difference
in this case as that we are simply not ...(worried?) by homosexual
behaviour between consenting adults.
Do those who are now mounting an unholy crusade against guaranteed freedom
of sexual association want this situation in Namibia ?
We already have a strong current in this country displaying the above
trends which were so characteristically a feature of Nazism and Stalinism.
Hardly a week goes by, without us hearing of the " ... ", although they are
hardly a group except by their respective languages.
We hear of "colonialists" and their "puppets", and these people are by no
means exclusively white or black. Not only what is being said, but the
privileges extended to family or party money exemplify the characteristics
of Nazism or Stalinism.
We are a lone voice in even reporting on the President's outburst against
freedom of sexual association. This bothers us.
Where is the LAC? Or does it believe that no human right abuse can take
place at a Swapo Women's Council? Where is ...? But we never thought that
this organization would come out against a breach of human rights, when
this newspaper was the sole one with sufficient guts to speak out.
And what about the rest of the media? Why this sudden timidity?
The main thing about the President's outburst is that it is so incredibly
sad, even sadder than his recent interview with the Star of Johannesburg
which has done is so much harm.
We cannot but escape the impression that where Mugabe leads, Mr Nujoma will
follow - even if in the end we will suffer at the hands of sensitive donors.
But the saddest of it all is that the President, through doing all these
things, is not gaining in statemanship: He is absent from the African
Summit on the States around the Great Lakes to which both Mugabe and Mandela
have been invited.
Typed from a fax by Bjoern Skolander